Monthly Archives: May 2008

Occasional contributor Bill Katz now posts daily at Urgent Agenda, though he saves his longer reflections on life and politics for us. Today he critically examines comparisons between Barack Obama and JFK: I will claim to have a good memory. It’s not a memory, to be sure, that’s very effective in the short run. I really can’t recall why I walked across this room a few minutes ago. But I »

Here is the audio clip of my appearance on Bill Bennett’s radio show this morning, talking about our post, Are We Safer?. The clip is courtesy of Bill’s great producer, Seth Leibsohn. Click to play: To comment on this post go here. »

Douglas Feith, author of the invaluable book War and Decision, has a piece in today’s Wall Street Journal criticizing the way President Bush “sold” the war in Iraq. Feith writes: In the fall of 2003, a few months after Saddam Hussein’s overthrow, U.S. officials began to despair of finding stockpiles of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. The resulting embarrassment caused a radical shift in administration rhetoric about the war in »

Zbigniew Brzezinski has accused members of the American Jewish establishment of “McCarthyism” in their attitude towards critics of Israel, and has accused American supporters of Israel of being too ready to accuse critics of Israel of “anti-Semitism.” Ed Lasky exposes a key factual misrepresentation in Brzezinski’s statement — contrary to his claim, AIPAC does favor a two-state solution in the Middle East. Brzezinski’s misrepresentation does not come as a surprise. »

Czech Republic President Vaclav Klaus addressed the National Press Club today, talking about his book Blue Planet in Green Shackles, which has just been translated into English. Klaus speaks from a unique perspective, as an economist who lived under Communism and who places the current wave of environmentalist extremism squarely in that tradition. Introduced as a global warming skeptic, Klaus objected: I’m just surprised to hear that I’m skeptical vis-a-vis »

Investors Business Daily points out that Memorial Day weekend was an excellent one for the forces of civilization, with notable progress in Iraq, Colombia, Afghanistan and the Philippines. On top of that, one of the principal theorists of jihad, Egypt’s Dr. Fadl, has turned against terrorism and his old pupil Zawahiri. And, as IBD notes, most of these successes were achieved by “U.S. allies — the ones we supposedly don’t »

Some of our readers may find this article in the New Yorker by George Packer, “The Fall of Conservatism,” worth reading. Don’t be too put off by the cartoonist’s grotesque caricatures of Buckley, Goldwater, Reagan, Gingrich, and McCain on the first page of the story; Packer’s caricatures are, for the most part, less twisted. Other than the fact that the Republican brand is in trouble now, and that conservative ideas »

If you think Hillary Clinton has been slow to accept the results at the ballot box, meet the folks who run Dartmouth College, writes William McGurn in today’s Wall Street Journal. McGurn continues: Like Sen. Clinton, the powers that be at Dartmouth have been getting trounced at the voting booth by an opposition campaigning for change. Like Sen. Clinton, Dartmouth’s establishment has responded with increasingly desperate attacks. And like Sen. »

Joel Mowbray first took a look at the recent controversy regarding Pastor John Hagee in a Washington Times column addressing Frank Rich’s attack on Hagee. Attacks on Hagee have continued, leading Senator McCain to repudiate Hagee’s endorsement. In the attacks, Hagee is postulated as the right-wing analogue of Jeremiah Wright: What Wright is to Obama, Hagee is to McCain. Mowbray now returns to provide perspective on the latest installment of »

I’ll be on Bill Bennett’s radio show tomorrow morning at 8:30 eastern, 7:30 central. We’ll talk about Are We Safer?, and maybe have a little fun at Barack Obama’s expense. It’s hard to resist! To comment on this post go here. »

Barack Obama must be the most gaffe-prone politician in memory. Today, he delivered a Memorial Day speech in New Mexico. After greeting the local Democratic Party dignitaries, he began: On this Memorial Day, as our nation honors its unbroken line of fallen heroes — and I see many of them in the audience here today — our sense of patriotism is particularly strong. Memorial Day honors those who have died »

Today is the anniversary of the birth of Peggy Lee. Born Norma Deloris Egstrom, Lee had an improbably winding path to success from her hometown of Jamestown, North Dakota, to Fargo (where WDAY’s Ken Kennedy gave her the name that stuck), to Minneapolis, St. Louis, and Chicago, where she was discovered by Benny Goodman at the moment he needed a replacement for Helen Forrest. In between St. Louis and Chicago »

Syracuse has won the NCAA men’s lacrosse title with a 13-10 victory over Johns Hopkins. This is the record tenth time the Orangemen have won the national championship. Hopkins was also going for a tenth crown. Hopkins took an early lead (4-1, if I recall correctly), but even at that stage Syracuse had most of the possession and most of the shots. Great goalkeeping by Michael Gvozden masked Syracuse’s superiority »

…I’m reposting the video below, which I originally put up last November as Patriotism: Not Quite Dead in the Public Schools. This was the original post: Conservatives tend to be skeptical of the public schools, which too often put more stock in political correctness than either academic achievement or traditional values. So when the public schools do something well, it’s good to take notice. In the school district where I »

The decision by Dartmouth’s board of trustees to terminate the right of Dartmouth alumni to elect half of the board insults the intelligence of the men and women of Dartmouth. For it implies that Dartmouth alums are not capable of electing trustees of the same caliber that a small, self-appointed elite group can select. The slate of candidates for the Association of Alumni executive committee that wants to capitulate to »

Tom Mountain writes a timely and poignant column in honor of Memorial Day on the losses of the citizens of Newton, Massachusetts in World War II. It is a column that provides needed perspective and renders appropriate honor: When Fred Guzzi, head of Newton Veterans’ Services, faxed me six pages full of names, I immediately called to remind him that I requested the list of soldiers from Newton who died »

On the stump, Barack Obama usually concludes his comments on Iraq by saying, “and it hasn’t made us safer.” It is an article of faith on the left that nothing the Bush administration has done has enhanced our security, and, on the contrary, its various alleged blunders have only contributed to the number of jihadists who want to attack us. Empirically, however, it seems beyond dispute that something has made »